“It is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person.”
-Chimamanda Adichie
I recently watched a lecture by novelist Chimamanda Adichie that brought new light to my understanding of the power of stories. Adichie spoke about the dangers inherent in having a single story about a people or a place.
Having grown up in Nigeria, she was surprised and irritated when she moved to the U.S. at age 19 to discover that the people she met had a single story of Africa. To her new roommate, Africa was a place of “beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.”
“In this single story,” she continued, “there was no possibility of Africans being similar to [my roommate] in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.”
In an age of unprecedented consolidation, especially but not exclusively in the media industry, we all become victims of the single story. We saw last issue how the single story of success in the agriculture industry (consolidate and grow) has dispossessed hog farmers in this country. In this issue, Erin Laing and Nikko Snyder warn us on pg. 10 of the dangers of consolidation in the baby food industry (local diets are healthiest for people of all ages – and it doesn’t get more local than breastfeeding).
On pg. 6, Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya calls on us to look at the debate about Canada’s war in Afghanistan from more than one side. Encouraging us to consider the “geopolitical aims” of the Afghan occupation, she says, “They occupied our country in the name of women’s rights, but today the situation for women is as catastrophic as under the Taliban.”
The single story is never more dangerous than during war – when governments often justify death and destruction with their own biased version of the story, to a public torn between a moral opposition to war and an ethical obligation to “support the troops.” Of course, the most shocking recent example was the story crafted by the Bush administration and perpetuated by mainstream American media of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
I recently presented at a class called Understanding the Media. The facilitator, a self-described former “evil scribe” for the Canadian Press, was turned off by what he called our “anti-nuclear” politics and pegged the publication as a left-wing, niche-market newspaper. He was respectful, but obviously didn’t believe The Sasquatch pulled much weight or had a very broad appeal. I didn’t have the presence of mind to respond astutely that day, but here’s what I’d say next time:
The Sasquatch may not have mass appeal (yet), but we do have an engaged, intelligent and growing readership that understands the value of a diverse media landscape. As an independent publication, our role is to expand the range of stories available in this province – to ask questions that other media outlets aren’t asking, to tell new stories, or tell old stories from new angles. We’re not going to give climate deniers front-page attention because, as Mike Bray points out in his letter to the editor, other newspapers have got that story well covered. Our role, in other words, is to help our readers engage with this province and its people more deeply and more completely by adding another dimension, another point of view, another kind of story, to our media menu. And for the growing number of people who understand and appreciate this need for balance and diversity in a frighteningly unbalanced, mono-cultured world, we do pull a lot of weight.
And with that, I invite you to peruse this issue’s array of delectably unique stories – from isotopes to astronauts and lots in between.
Thanks for reading,
Shayna Stock, Editor
P.S. The lecture by Chimamanda Adichie is available on TED.com – a fantastic bank of talks and performances by some of the world’s most inspired and talented people.